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"THE INFANCY OF THE UNION." 



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"THE INFANCY OF THE UNION/' 



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A DISCOURSE, 



DEUVERED BEFORE THE 



NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 



Thursday, December 19, 1§39. 



BY V 



WILLIAM BV^ reed 



PUBLISHED AT THE REaUEST OF THE SOCIETY. 



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PHIEiADEIiPHIA ! 



J. CRISSY, PRINTER, NO. 4 MINOR STREET. 

1840. 



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A DISCOURSE 



ON 



"THE INFANCY OF THE UNION." 



When ancient Corinth fell before the arms of victo- 
rious Rome, the legend tells us, that out of the various 
metals which were melted together in the conflagration 
of the city, there was created one, more precious than 
any of its elements; more enduring in its strength; 
more beautiful in its brightness. This classical tradi- 
tion illustrates, as well the process as the result, when 
a Revolution blended together the varied communities 
of colonial North America. 

Whenever the philosophical history of our country 
shall be written, its most interesting portion will be 
that which records the growth and progress of the social 
union. The Federal Union, as a frame of government, 
has been often and ably discussed, and its foundations, 
whether in the Declaration of Independence, the Arti- 



4 

cles of Confederation, or the Constitution itself, have 
been carefully scrutinized; and by no one more so, 
than by that venerable man, who, during the past year, 
with the alacrity of youth, obeyed your summons on a 
memorable anniversary, and with the full vigour of a 
mind on which age has cast no shadow, discharged 
the duty which your summons imposed.* But there is 
an union beyond and above all frames of government. 
There are foundations deeper than any that have yet 
been laid bare. Assuming the corner-stone of the 
Union, as a national political institution, to be the 
Declaration of Independence, and no one has, I be- 
lieve, dug deeper, and that on the Fourth of July, 
seventeen hundred and seventy-six, our forefathers 
laid that stone in its chamber of enduring repose, what 
I seek to call your attention to, is the union of senti- 
ment which brought the builders together, with the 
spade, the mattock, and the pick, not to build, from 
brick and slime, a leaning tower, " whose top might 
reach unto heaven," but to lay the eternal masonry of 
freedom's citadel, hewn from the bosom of our native 
hills, to be bound together by the enduring cement of 
indissoluble aifection. 

Curious, indeed, would be the inquiry, as to the pre- 
cise period when the North American Colonies began 
to look upon each other as friends and brethren. As 

* Ex President AJams. (Sec Appendix, A.) 



originally planted, they had no principle of union. 
They were not one in origin, in language, in religion, 
or in interest. None could suppose then that they 
were one in destiny. The infant settlements on the 
coast hardly ventured to conjecture what lands, or 
what people lay behind the headlands which put out 
into the ocean, and when they did peep beyond, they 
often saw strange and hostile faces, and heard the 
sound of other tongues than the one they spoke. — 
Even where there was a common origin, there was no 
sympathy; and the Swede, and the Dutchman, were 
better friends far, than the Cavaliers and Independents 
who came from Old England, who seemed to know no 
dearer use for a common tongue than to revile each 
other conveniently, and claimed a common birth-place, 
as giving them the privilege to hate each other more 
virulently. 

How this separate existence was modified, and the 
perfect union of sentiment produced, anterior to any 
political union and aside from all political combina- 
tions, is, then, an inquiry full of curious interest. 

There were causes of different kinds at work, com- 
mencing at an early period, and accumulating and 
strengthening till the work was done. The ultimate 
and immediate inducement to political union was, of 
course, community of social right and common suffer- 
ing under oppression ; but there were others of equal 
efficacy, operating secretly and indirectly. It was a 



6 

remark of the elder Adams, that " the Revolution was 
twenty years old when the war began," and it is no less 
true, that the Union was fifty years old when it was 
first declared to exist. 

There were some inducements to union which re- 
quire no illustration, connected mainly with the geogra- 
phical relations of the Colonies. Looking at the face 
of the country, and bearing in mind that for a long 
time the settlements were merely on the coast, and in 
depth did not extend to the first mountain range which 
runs lengthwise through the Continent, it is obvious 
that from Georgia to New Hampshire, there was no 
physical barrier to divide the colonists from each other. 
There was no arm of the ocean interposed to prevent 
free intercourse — no bay, or river that could not be 
easily crossed. There were neither Pyrenees nor 
Alps; but the primitive mail-carrier of those days, at 
an early period, so soon, at least, as the path was cut 
through the forest, and the thicket cleared of the In- 
dian, carried his little budget slowly but securely 
from one end of British North America to the other. 
Each great river, the Delaware, the Susquehanna, the 
Hudson, and the Connecticut, had its source beyond 
the charter limits of the colony on whose shores it 
reached the ocean, and the riparian privilege which 
nature gives, of free navigation, in and out, unques- 
tioned at that time, made distant settlers on the same 
waters, feel like neighbours. 



It is not easy to ascertain when the first road 
was made along the sea-board. In sixteen hundred 
and seventy-seven, before the settlement of Philadel- 
phia, William Edmundson, a public Friend, travel- 
ed southward, from New York to the Delaware, in 
company with a Swede and an Indian guide. In at- 
tempting to cross from Middletown Point, they lost 
their way, and were obliged to go back, so as to 
find the Raritan at any point and to follow its mar- 
gin, till they came to a small landing from New York, 
and thence by a path to the Falls of the Dela- 
ware. " By this means, only," says he, "did we find 
our way, and we saw no tame animals on the route." 
In sixteen hundred and ninety-eight, one of William 
Penn's companions, in speaking of the infant pros- 
perity of the Quaker settlement, attributes it to " its 
vast and extended traffique and commerce (the gor- 
geous merchant of the present day will smile at the 
phrase) by sea and land," and then proceeds to enu- 
merate the distant points whither this vast traffic ex- 
tends — not Calcutta, Canton, or Batavia — not Lima, 
Mazatlan, or Astoria: but St. Christopher's, Ber- 
muda, Montserrat, Barbadoes, Carolina, Virginia, 
Maryland, New England, and New York. Could this 
poor, humble-minded, primitive quaker, who thought 
he saw then a vast and extended commerce, open his 
eyes and ears now, and see what we all see, unmoved, 
every moment of our lives; could he see American 



8 

commerce disturbed by the opium-eaters of the celestial 
Empire, and hear of teas and silks, bought in Canton 
and paid for by bills of exchange, drawn in Philadel- 
phia or New York on London, his agony of surprise 
would not be less than yours, could you see your pos- 
terity, after the lapse of the same number of years, 
standing amidst the ruins of abandoned railroads and 
disregarded steamboats, having miraculously retro- 
graded to an age of barter. 

But the testimony of a far greater man than either 
of these obscure travellers, to the condition of the 
colonies at that period, has been preserved. In the 
latter part of sixteen hundred and seventy-one, George 
Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, and one 
of those great agitators of the sluggish spirit, to whom 
the Reformation gave full scope, after being scourged 
and imprisoned, year after year, in Great Britain, landed 
in America. His mission was pastoral in its character, 
and had for its object, the encouragement of the Quaker 
settlements, then thinly scattered over this wilderness. 
The Journal of his American pilgrimage, as you are 
aware, is still extant, and tells in language of extreme 
simplicity and beauty its tale of privation and patient 
endurance ; a tale strongly illustrative of the real cha- 
racter of the obstacles to social union, which the early 
settlers encountered and overcome. He landed near 
the mouth of the Patuxent river, on the western shore 
of Maryland, and traveled as far eastward as Rhode 



9 

Island, and as far south as Carolina. After crossing 
the Chesapeake, his route, northward, was hy the east- 
ern shore to New Castle. " The next day," says he,* 
" we began our journey to New England, and a tedious 
journey it was, tlirough the woods and the wilderness, 
over bogs and across great rivers. We got over the 
Delaware, not without some danger of our lives, and 
then had that wilderness country to pass through, since 
called West Jersey, not inhabited by any English, so 
that we traveled a whole day together, without seeing 
man or woman, house or dwelling-place. Sometimes 
we lay in the woods, by a fire, and sometimes in Indian 
wigwams." Thus travelling, pausing at occasional set- 
tlements, this illustrious Pilgrim, for such the religious 
sway he exercised entitles him to be considered, tra- 
versed Long Island, and reached his journey's end, in 
the Providence plantations. " Here," says he, using 
the peculiar language of an enthusiastic age, " we had 
a large meeting, at which, beside Friends, were some 
hundreds of people, as was supposed. A blessed, 
heavenly meeting this was — a powerful, thundering 
testimony for truth was borne therein — a great sense 
there was upon the people, and much brokenness and 
tenderness amongst them." "When," he adds, "this 
great meeting was over, it was somewhat hard for 
friends to part, for the glorious power of the Lord 



* Fox's Journal. Folio Edition, 1775, p. 441. 

2 



10 

which was over all, and his blessed truth, had knit 
and united them altogether — at last, tilled with his 
power, and rejoicing in his truth, they went away, 
with joyful hearts, to their homes, in the several 
colonies where they lived." 

And here, let me pause one moment, and ask you, 
anticipating conclusions to be reached hereafter, to 
trace an active germ of union in the record of this 
early missionary. — George Fox soon after returned to 
England, again to feel the scourge of persecution, and 
again to abide in the prison-house; but he left behind 
him "joyful hearts in the several colonies," — hearts 
which beat in unison on the one great topic of what 
they believed to be religious truth, and were bound 
together in communion which local or political sepa- 
ration could not sever. In every colony that he visited, 
the apostle of Quakerism found, or left a congregation, 
and thus connected by a spiritual chain of union, 
every humble community from New England to Geor- 
gia. Nor must it be forgotten, at what an early day 
other sects were weaving the web of religious commu- 
nion over the wilderness. While the Jesuit missionary 
was planning, and executing his scheme of conversion 
in one quarter, and at a later day, the accomplished 
Berkeley, saw in his bright and poetic visions, the rise 
of new Christian empires here, the unsandalled feet of 
two humble, but not less ambitious missionaries of 
truth. Fox and Wesley, were traversing, at long inter- 



11 

vals, portions of this continent, and their footsteps can 
now be traced as plainly as when they were first im- 
printed on the virgin soil. The influence of Christian 
communion, in its varied forms, in aiding the growth 
of the social union, is, of itself, a subject of vast in- 
terest, to which I regret I can but refer in passing. 

Such was the condition of Colonial America in 
sixteen hundred and seventy-one, when George Fox 
left it. There was no visible union then. 

The history of intercommunication, accurately writ- 
ten, would throw great light on the growth of that 
sentiment of union, which, when political causes lent 
their agency, matured so gloriously. On an occasion 
like this, it can but be alluded to. I have spoken of 
the primitive mail-carrier of Colonial America. The 
creation of this convenient functionary was long post- 
poned, and his progress was necessarily very slow. 
In sixteen hundred and ninety-two, a Post Office sys- 
tem was projected, if I mistake not, in Virginia, but 
almost immediately abandoned, in consequence of the 
difficulties of travelling. 

In seventeen hundred, there was a local Post Office 
in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and in seventeen 
hundred and ten, an act of Parliament was passed, one 
of the few acts of beneficence for which Colonial Ame- 
rica ever had to thank the mother country, and which 
is an important statute, as being one applying to all 



12 

America, and designed for the common benefit.* — 
Under this statute, the chief Letter Office was estab- 
lished in New York, the line of mails extending as far 
south as Charleston, the chief town of South Carolina, 
and as far eastward as Portsmouth, the chief town of 
New Hampshire. The revenue, from colonial post- 
ages, was appropriated for the general purposes of the 
Empire, and to defray the expenses of the pending 
war; and a strong prohibitory section is embodied in 
the statute, to meet an evil then, and since the fruitful 
source of partisan complaint, (whether justly or un- 
justly I do not venture here to say,) inflicting heavy 
penalties, and " permanent official disfranchisement on 
any Postmaster General, or his deputies, or any person, 
employed under him or them, who should, by word, 
message, or writing, or in any other manner whatso- 
ever, interfere in any election in the mother country or 
the colonies." 

It required, however, more than an act of Parlia- 
ment, to bring into convenient action, mail communica- 
tion between the distant parts of the Colonial settle- 
ments, and it was not, so far as I can now ascertain, 
till twelve or fifteen years later, that a continuous mail- 
route was organized even on the sea board. In seven- 
teen hundred and twenty-two, a Philadelphia News- 
paper expresses considerable alarm at the delay of the 

* Stat. 9 Ann. chap. 10. For some interesting memorials, &c,, relating to the early 
Post Office, see Vol. 7, Mass. Hist. Collections, 43. 



13 

New York Post, "which," it says, with a note of ad- 
miration as emphatic as any ever used in our day, 
when the Great Western delays her arrival twenty- 
four hours, "is three days beyond its time!" 

It is not easy, in these days of secondary causes, 
when, in the heat and hurry from which few can 
claim exemption, no one pretends to trace a result of 
any kind beyond the immediate and palpable agency 
which produces it, to realize the vast effects produced 
by this one imperial agent, the Colonial Post Office. 
No matter how dilatory its processes may have been ; 
no matter how many days and nights the loitering let- 
ter-bag may have wasted or required on its weary way; 
still, when it came, it brought distant points together 
in a right line and over land, which before were foreign 
to each other ; and when it did not come, there was a 
feeling of disappointment at the want of news from 
their neighbours — a word till then unknown in the 
colonial vocabulary. The New Yorker no longer 
looked altogether out to sea, but began to feel an inte- 
rest in the ferry-craft that brought from Staten Island 
the ten or twenty pound mail-bag, freighted Avith few, 
but important letters from Philadelphia, and Annapolis, 
and Williamsburg, and Charleston. The Postman, 
though not then "the herald of a noisy world" was a 
person of great importance, and a political and social 
agent, with influence far beyond the short calculation 



14 

of the day. It was the sound of the axe in the track- 
less forest — or the blazed tree to the craving eye 
of the man who thinks himself alone — it proved there 
was a neighbourhood, in what seemed to be a wilder- 
ness, and that there were those, not far off, who had 
sympathies, direct and immediate, which were needed 
and appreciated. 

One immediate effect of the Post Office, in America, 
was the invigoration of the Newspaper press. The 
infancy of the newspaper art, in America, was sickly 
and precarious. It may, however, easily be conceived, 
how great must have been the impulse given to it by the 
institution of a Post Office in the colonies. The first 
Postmasters were the Editors. The Press told its 
tale of local grievance, or exemption, or danger. The 
mail was the telegraph which transmitted it to those 
who complained, or exulted, or feared, in sympathy — 
and, by this means, an union of sentiment was formed, 
long before the parties to it, or the world, dreamed of 
its existence. It was, to be sure, a loose and uncertain 
bond — a bond of accidental feeling, which might be 
easily interrupted, and the fragments made repulsive 
to each other. Nor, in asserting its precarious exist- 
ence, must I be understood to exaggerate its obliga- 
tion, or to intimate that there was, in fact or in visible 
promise, any thing like political union in it. All that 
is meant is, that in communities so closely contiguous, 



15 

and which, in addition, were made, by artificial means, 
to know of each other's existence, and take an interest 
in each other's welfare, there can be discerned at least 
the seed of the union beginning to germinate. Other 
influences of more apparent efficacy, soon began to 
operate. 

And before I notice any of these, let me say, in ad- 
vance, that there has always seemed to me an error in 
supposing that the colonies surmounted any very great 
difficulties in forming their political union. The an- 
tipathies and repugnance which, unquestionably, ex- 
isted at the time of the first settlements, softened 
down much earlier than is usually supposed. As early 
as seventeen hundred, they may have been, in a mea- 
sure, strangers, but they certainly were not enemies to 
each other ; and in seventeen hundred and twenty-three, 
when Benjamin Franklin, the runaway apprentice, 
traveled from Boston to Philadelphia, it is obvious that 
his journey was through friendly regions, and that the 
border-lines of Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, 
and New Jersey, which he successively crossed, marked 
no very palpable distinction of character or feeling, but 
were little else than the conventional lines which they 
now are. The individual who now addresses you has, 
not very many years since, experienced far more trou- 
ble from adverse local regulations in a neighbouring 
Federal Union, whose Constitution was a literal tran- 
script of our own, than did Franklin, more than one 



16 

hundred years ago, when he worked his way from New 
England to Philadelphia.* 

Nor was it the least of the delusions under which the 
agents of the Metropolitan Government laboured, that 
they never, in the lapse of time, were sensible of the 
growth of any common sentiment, but from first to last, 
asseverated earnestly, and no doubt sincerely, that con- 
certed action was, and ever would be, impracticable. 
In seventeen hundred and twenty-eight, an official com- 
munication, on this very subject, was made to the go- 
vernment, in these emphatic terms : — 

" From the universal loyalty of the people, even 
beyond any other parts of His Majesty's dominions, 
it is absurd to imagine they have any thoughts of inde- 
pendence; and to show the reverse, it is the custom of 
all persons coming from thence for London, though 
they and their fathers and grandfathers, were born in 
New England, to say, and always deem it, coming 
home, as naturally as if born in London; so that it may 
be said, without being ludicrous, that it would not be 



* In Bishop Berkeley's Proposal for the Institution of a College for the educa- 
tion of Clergymen in Bermuda, published in seventeen hundred and twenty-five, two 
years after Franklin's journey, is the following passage.—" A general intercourse and 
correspondence among the colonics is hardly to be found. For on the Continent, 
where there are neither inns, nor carriages, nor bridges over the rivers, there is no 
travelling by land between distant places. The English settlements are reputed to 
extend along the sea-coast for fifteen hundred miles. It is, therefore, plain, there can 
be no convenient communication between them, otherwise than by sea — no advantage, 
therefore, in this point, can be gained by settling on the continent." 



17 

more absurd to place two of His Majesty's beef eaters 
to watch a child in the cradle, that it do not rise and 
cut its father's throat, than to guard these infant colo- 
nies to prevent their shaking off the British yoke.* 
Besides, they are so distinct from one another in their 
forms of government, in their religious rites, in their 
emulation of trade, and consequently, in their affec- 
tions, that they never can unite in so dangerous an 
enterprise." 

"Never," says the adage, "is a long time;" and this 
promise of permanent loyalty, this assurance of help- 
less imbecility, was broken before it was fairly written. 
There was an union, or what is the same thing, an 
adaptation for union, though not then discernible to 
those who would not see. Significance was given 
to a current phrase of colonial conversation to which 
it really had no claim, and calling England " home," 
was most absurdly supposed to imply an attachment to 
her soil, so exclusive, as to shut out all sympathy with 
their neighbours on this side of the water who called 
England "home" too. The cradled infant was a ne- 
glected child, which had soon to help itself, scramble 
about without assistance, and, as we shall presently 
See, like the infant of mythology, defend itself against 
enemies from whom its natural guardian should have 
protected it. 

* Hutchinson, vol. ii. 319. 



18 

Social causes of union, of more palpable efficacy, 
soon began to develope themselves. As the colonial 
settlements strengthened and deepened, they began to 
feel an outward pressure, equal on every point, and 
producing a sense of danger in every part. This was 
the pressure of Indian warfare. It would be foreign 
to the purpose of this discourse to say a word as to 
the merit of the colonial treatment of the Aborigines 
of this continent. Be it what it may, the decree had 
gone forth from higher than human authority that the 
savage man and the savage brute were to yield up the 
wilderness to civilization ; and they did yield it up, and 
with equal reluctance : and for more than a century, 
the colonist was an armed man, armed for the protec- 
tion of his primitive fireside and his desolate family, 
and every year the frontier line of civilization became 
more extended. 

The Indian wars, beside producing the mere social 
effect of community of interest, soon led to political 
combinations, more or less extensive and more or less 
intimate. So long as the Indians remained in force on 
the east bank of the Hudson river, New England com- 
bined to protect itself, and we see accordingly, the rude 
but effective '•^confederacy'" (the word then first had 
its application in America) of sixteen hundred and 
forty-three. The formation of this confederacy, as a 
measure of incipient political sovereignty, and a step 
towards independence, has been often noticed. As an 



19 

act of union, it is far more significant, or rather, it 
is mainly as a measure of union that it had any very 
decided tendency to independence. Had it been merely 
a temporary contribution of military quotas for the com- 
mon defence at a season of peculiar danger, it could not 
be regarded as affording any very decided illustration 
of the seminal principle of American union, and, in its 
form and structure, would have borne no other character 
than that of the accidental necessity which created it; 
but if any one will have reference to its elaborate ar- 
rangement, he will see the basis of future political com- 
binations distinctly marked. Its terms dwell with 
emphasis on doctrinal unanimity in religious matters, 
as a main inducement to political concord, and refer to 
the contest then waging in the mother country, "by 
means of which," says the preamble, "we are hindered, 
both from the humble way of seeking advice, and reap- 
ing those comfortable fruits of protection which at other 
times we might well expect." " We therefore," it 
continues, " do consider it our bounden duty, without 
delay, to enter into a present consociation amongst 
ourselves for mutual strength and help, in all future 
concernments, that as in nation and relation, so in other 
respects, we be and continue one, according to the 
tenor and true meaning of the ensuing articles — by the 
name and title of ' the United Colonies of New Eng- 
land,' to be bound in a firm and perpetual league of 
friendship and amity, for ofience and defence, mutual 



20 

advice and succour on all just occasions, both for pre- 
serving and propagating the truths and liberties of the 
Gospel, and for our own mutual safety and welfare." 

The history of this confederacy is of less interest in 
the connexion in which I wish to consider it than its 
institution. It was the creature of necessity, but it 
started into being, complete and perfect. Its heart's 
blood was religious sympathy. The spirit which ani- 
mated it was of that spirit which was working great re- 
sults and great catastrophes in the parent country. 
Sixteen hundred and forty-three, was an era when prin- 
ciples of self-government were in active fermentation, 
when the blast which had been driven into the ancient 
stone-work of Monarchy, had been fired, and the old 
walls were shaking fearfully. Then, the colonies of 
Puritan New England had close sympathy with the 
dominant party in Great Britain, and saw, with delight 
which religious enthusiasm made most intense, the 
near triumph of men and of opinions for whose sake 
they had been mocked, and reviled, and scourged, and 
exiled; but the Parliament, even in its triumph, was 
too much engrossed at. home, to do an)'^ thing for 
its distant, though beloved New England. The co- 
lonies found themselves in danger and unprotected, and 
at once, with an impulse so prompt as to prove it to be 
natural, declared themselves, not free and independent, 
which then they certainly did not wish to be, but united. 
They proclaimed, not separation, but perfect and per- 
petual UNION. 



01 

/v 1 

In less than twenty years, the parent country had 
witnessed the surrender of its new-born and vigorous 
liberty into the hands, first of that great man, the great- 
est perhaps that England ever produced, the first 
Protector, and then of the most perfidious of her mo- 
narchs, the second Charles Stuart. United New Eng- 
land had, in the interval, been busy with her savage 
foes and foot by foot had driven the concentrated 
vigour of her union further and further westward. 
Thus occupied, she had taken no active part, or dis- 
played no active sympathy, in the conflicts of Great 
Britain, though, in the vigorous language of one of her 
own historians, " she had been courted thereunto, by 
the person who is now laid asleep in the dark house of 
the grave, with his weapons under his head,"*^ and the 
Restoration found these colonies, though united, yet 
not flagrantly disloyal. 

The process of time witnessed the gradual conquest 
or pacification of the Indians within the limits of New 
England, and, as the reluctant savage withdrew west of 
the Hudson, and stood, with his armed companions, at 
the foot of the Blue Ridge, determined to retreat no 
further, the circle of civilization becoming larger, there 
was a wider scope for united councils and united action. 
Something more than a New England confederacy was 
requisite for the common safety. The unbroken forest, 

* Hubbard, 57G. 



22 

and the savage enemy which tenanted it, reached from 
Georgia to New York, and as the charter limits of the 
New England provinces were asserted to extend far 
beyond the Hudson, they still had an interest in frontier 
warfare, though the war-whoop no longer disturbed 
their familiar privacy. And hence we see, from this 
time downward, to the attempted union in seventeen 
hundred and fifty-four, a constant succession of at- 
tempts at united action. The instinct was decided. 
As early as sixteen hundred and ninety-three, Penn- 
sylvania, at the instance of Governor Fletcher, accred- 
ited an agent to treat with Commissioners from the 
neighbouring colonies, at New York, concerning 
quotas of men and moneys for frontier defence. And, 
from time to time, there were many other plans sug- 
gested, of the same kind, and with the same object.* 

But it was not these semi-political combinations which 
were fabricating the true colonial union. Higher agen- 
cies were at work. The New England Confederacy 
was remarkable as the first fruits of a common danger, 
and the outward pressure on a few settlements and 
within a narrow compass, and as remarkable for the 
regularity of its structure and the completeness of its 
parts. The occasional conventions of provincial agents 
— of Governors, or commissioners, in later days, had 
no such interest. The masses were blending and har- 

♦ See Pennsylvania Colonial Records, 1G93, vol. i. p. 352. 



23 

monizing, though the forms of concerted action were 
less perfect. 

In the early times of colonial warfare, it had been a 
strife, and a bloody strife, between the settler and the 
savage ; but it was not long before the Indian found a 
new and formidable ally in the trained soldiery of 
France, who, lending to the savage the accomplish- 
ments of a bloody trade, seemed to receive in return 
an ample portion of that ferocious, indiscriminate ap- 
petite for carnage which characterizes the savage war- 
rior. The French and Indians thus allied, were as 
formidable foes as ever hung upon the precincts of a 
peaceful or a warlike land. 

It is much to be regretted that history has never yet 
adequately illustrated the great design of conquest and 
conversion, which was matured in the councils of 
Louis XIV, and which had for its field our western 
wilderness. That it was a scheme of vast scope and 
of sanguine promise cannot now be questioned. From 
the Lakes to the Ohio, the Jesuit missionary pursued 
his fearless and untiring course. No danger appalled 
him ; no difficulty arrested his progress : and close on 
his trail, the French soldier followed — the power of 
this world widening, for its own purposes, the path 
which the preacher of the world to come had made be- 
fore, and in the lapse of but few years, a line of French 
military posts was established on the western frontier 
from the Lakes to the Balize. Nor is there in history, 



24. 

a record more full of romantic interest, and at the same 
time less accurately or minutely illustrated, than that 
of the French missions in the Valley of the Mississippi 
anterior to the Peace of seventeen hundred and sixty- 
three. Within a few years after Philadelphia was 
settled, and while, occasionally, an Indian eye peered 
across the Hudson at the sturdy burghers of New 
Amsterdam, Vincennes and Kaskaskia were founded. 
The Jesuit had raised the cross, and preached the word 
of God to the tenants of the forest, and there floated 
over the infant settlement, the same white flag of Bour- 
bon France, which our mother country was fighting on 
the Atlantic and in Europe. And now, the far west- 
ward traveller is struck in the deep recesses of Indiana 
and Illinois with the names of Barrois, and Richard- 
ville, and Theriac, and Bolon, and Laplante, indicat- 
ing as distinctly their origin and boasting as justly of 
their unadulterated continental descent, as do the Stuy- 
vesants, and Van Rensselacrs, the Dessausures, and 
Petrigrus of our eastern soil.* 

The scheme of New France, thus commenced, and 
destined so soon to be abandoned, is one of the most 
magnificent divulged by history, and I can fully sym- 
pathize with a recent French traveller, one of the most 
accomplished that has ever visited us, when standing 

* The historical student will find a most interesting sketch of the French settle- 
ments in the West, in an Address, delivered February 22, 1839, before the Historical 
and Antiquarian Societies of Vincennc:?, by the Hon. John Law. 



25 

near the site of Fort Duquesne, now lost amidst the 
chimneys of our Pennsylvania Birmingham, he mourned 
over the disappointment of this great enterprise. " Se- 
venty-six years ago, this day," says Mr. Chevalier, " a 
handful of Frenchmen sorrowfully evacuated the Fort 
which stood on the point of land where the Allegheny 
and the Monongahela mingle their waters to form the 
Ohio, and the Empire of New France, like so many 
other magnificent schemes conceived in our country, 
ceased to exist. Fort Duquesne has now become Pitts- 
burgh, and in vain did I piously search for some re- 
lics of the old French fort. There is no longer a stone, 
or a brick on the Ohio, to attest that France ever had 
a foothold there." 

It is not my purpose to trace the progress of French 
and Indian warfare. From sixteen hundred and eighty 
to seventeen hundred and sixty-three, when the French 
flag was struck for ever in America, the British colo- 
nies never had a year, and scarcely a month of tran- 
quil, real peace. If there was nominal pacification be- 
tween the European sovereigns, no treaty bound the 
savage, and war may be said to have continued all the 
time. The pressure from without never intermitted. 
To-day, it was on Carolina — to-morrow, on Pennsyl- 
vania — the next day on New York and New England, 
and sometimes on all at once; and the effect necessa- 
rily and naturally was the invigoration of a sense of 

4 



26 

common interest — a community of direct personal con- 
cern, which was in fact an union.* 

Having shown the state of the country at the begin- 
ning of the century, and even still earlier, when George 
Fox wandered through its forest-covered territories, 
any one will be satisfied of the progress of united senti- 
ment, who will open a colonial newspaper or book of 
travels, at or immediately before the peace of Paris. 

In seventeen hundred and fifty-nine, an Episcopal 
clergyman, of the name of Burnaby, landed at York- 
town, in Virginia, and traveled as far northward and 
eastward as Portsmouth in New Hampshire. His 
published Journal is familiarly known to every histo- 
rical student, and although his recorded opinions as 
the result of his observations, are that no social sym- 
pathy, even at that late day, existed among the colonies, 
and that a political union was wholly impracticable, 
yet the narrative of his own experience as a traveller, 
contradicts, conclusively, these very opinions. From 
Virginia to New England, from Cape Charles to Cape 
Cod, he traveled through one people, and never seems to 
have discovered any other difference of manner, habit, 
or opinion, than such as in a modified form, exist now. 
The Virginian planter he then describes "as indolent, 
easy, and good natured, extremely fond of society, and 
much given to convivial pleasures. He has little regard 

* See Colonel Quarry's IVIemorial. 1703. Mass. Coll. Vol. 7, p. 332. 



21 

for economy, and is very apt to outrun his income." 
"The Virginians," he adds, "are very haughty, and 
jealous of their liberties, and cannot bear the thought 
of being controlled by any superior power on the face 
of the earth."* He crosses the Potomac and the 
Chesapeake and finds the Marylanders of the Eastern 
shore "very like their neighbours of Virginia, though 
not quite so presuming or so indolent, just as convivial, 
and not much less thriftless." He reaches Pennsylva- 
nia, and is lost in ecstacy. " Its trade," says he, " is 
surprisingly extensive. Their manufactures are very 
considerable. The Germantown woollen stockings are 
in high estimation — so much so, that the year before 
last, as I have been credibly informed, there were 
manufactured sixty thousand dozen pairs." (?) He 
enters our fair Quaker city and thus characterizes its 
population, how justly it is not for me to say. " The 



* As early as seventeen hundred and three, a Metropohtan agent thus charac- 
terized the sons of the Old Dominion. " The Virginia gentlemen consider this Pro- 
vince of greater importance to her Majesty than all the rest of the Provinces on the 
maine, and therefore they falsely conclude they ought to have greater Privileges than 
the rest of her Majesty's subjects. — The Assembly, they conclude themselves en- 
titled to all the Rights and Privileges of an English Parliament, and begin to search 
into the Records of that Honorable House for Precedents to govern themselves by. 
The Council have vanity enough to think that they almost stand upon equal terms 
with the Right Honourable, the House of Lords. These false and pernilious notions, 
if not timely prevented, will have a very ill consequence. — As I have already hinted 
to your Lordshipps, Commonwealth notions improve dayly, and if they be not checked 
in time, the rights and privileges of English subjects will be thought too narrow. 

Colonel Quarry's Memorial. 



28 

Philadelphians are a frugal and industrious people, not 
remarkably courteous and hospitable to strangers, un- 
less particularly recommended to them, but on the 
whole, I must confess, rather the reverse. The women, 
however, are exceedingly handsome and polite — they 
are naturally sprightly and fond of society, and un- 
questionably are far more accomplished and agreeable 
than the men." He arrives at New York, which he 
describes " as subject to one great inconvenience, the 
want of fresh water, so that the inhabitants are obliged 
to have it brought from springs, at some distance out 
of town;" but then (he adds with evident zest,) "as 
some compensation, these waters afford various kinds 
of most delicious fish — black-fish, sea-bass, sheeps-head, 
lobsters, and several others, most delicious in their 
kind," and finally, when he comes to describe the in- 
habitants, he says : " Being, however, of different na- 
tions, different religions, and different languages, it is 
almost impossible to give them any precise and deter- 
minate character," And so, throughout his colonial 
pilgrimage, he discriminates just as the casual traveller 
would do now, and deduces, just as a superficial tra- 
veller might do now, from these exaggerated traits of di- 
versity of manners, the absence of all community of 
sentiment amongst them. Yet he travels on, quietly 
and peaceably, through the English settlements, speak- 
ing the same language, using the same money, reading 
the same newspapers, meeting branches of the same 



29 

families, as in one united people, and it is only when he 
attempts to travel westward beyond that people's limits, 
that he is admonished he will find other than friends to 
each other and to himself. He ventures as far west as 
Winchester in Virginia, and then adds, in reference to 
those places of fashionable resort, whither so many, no 
doubt, of those who now hear me, periodically repair : 
" During my stay at Winchester, I was almost tempted 
to make a tour for a fortnight into Augusta County, for 
the sake of seeing some springs and other natural curio- 
sities, which the officers assured me were well worth 
visiting; but, as the Cherokees had been scalping in 
those parts only a few days before, I thought it most 
prudent to decline it." 

And yet his volume closes with grave speculations 
on the futurity then dawning on America, which satisfy 
him that its communities must always be disunited, 
helpless, and dependent, formed for happiness, perhaps, 
" but certainly not formed for empire or for union" — 
and as a reason for this conclusion, adduces the rival- 
ship between New York and Pennsylvania, the two most 
powerful and aspiring colonies, whom he describes '' as 
having an inexhaustible source of animosity in their 
jealousy for the trade of Ne7V Jersey ! /" Thus contra- 
dictory were the opinions and the experience of an in- 
telligent traveller in seventeen hundred and fifty-nine, 
and thus dimly did he see the future. 



30 

Five years prior to this date, a great incident in the 
affairs of Colonial America had occurred, which has 
confidently been relied on by those who question the 
antiquity of our social union — the meeting of the Com- 
missioners, at Albany, in seventeen hundred and fifty- 
four, and the failure of their plan of confederation. 

The history of this experiment, I am bound to pre- 
sume, is familiar to you all. It was the convention of 
twenty-three commissioners, chosen by the Assemblies 
and commissioned by the crown, with a view, in the 
first instance, to devise a concert of action against the 
French and Indians. All that the Lords of Trade 
contemplated when they recommended this meeting was 
a compact, by which, after a war was begun, no colony 
should make a separate treaty with the Indians.* But 
the significant fact is, that no sooner was the Conven- 
tion organized, than the proposition for a general and 
permanent union was introduced and unanimously ap- 
proved, and within the short space of three weeks, the 
details of a well organized plan of a National Consti- 
tution were as unanimously adopted. 

This act of the Representatives of the People thus 
convoked, speaks volumes. It told the secret, long 
disguised, that the social union had so matured that po- 
litical union became a natural suggestion. Nor is it 
conceivable, that men as sagacious as Franklin and 

* Massachusetts Hist. Trans. 3d Series, p. 23. 



31 

Hutchinson, would have warmly espoused a measure so 
decisive, without the strong conviction, not merely that 
the necessities of the people required, but that their 
minds were prepared for it. And it is as little accord- 
ant with the ordinary principles of human action, that 
they and their colleagues, all men of ability and con- 
sideration, should have committed so gross a blunder, 
or escaped its consequences, as to frame and recommend 
a plan of National Union, with the sovereign preroga- 
tives of taxation, coinage, enlistment, and treaties vested 
in it, subject alone to the paramount control of the 
Crown, to a people so divided by local jealousies as it 
has been described. 

The plan failed, it is true. Though unanimously re- 
commended by the Convention, it was rejected by every 
Colony to which it was meant to apply, and whose re- 
presentatives had voted for it. The colonial assemblies 
(for popular representation was the privilege of all) saw 
new danger, and perhaps new tyranny, in the delegated 
royal authority — the " imperium in imperio" of the Co- 
lonial Executive — and the ministry at home could not 
regard with complacency the creation of an united 
though dependent sovereignty, in a country where they 
saw their advantage in division, and where they only 
had recommended temporary concert, not enduring 
union.* 

* See Report of Connecticut Committee (1st Series Mass. H. C. vol. 7, p. 209) 
recommending rejection of the plan, mainly on the ground of its interference with 
Charter privileges of se// taxation. 



32 

But the plan mainly failed from a cause of greater ef- 
ficacy which was at work unseen. Some sovereign, 
paramount authority was required to enforce political 
union and give it sanction, and no such supreme autho- 
rity then existed or was then exercised; for a power 
higher than any known to the British Colonial or Me- 
tropolitan Constitution was requisite, and that power, 
sovereign necessity and the popular will of the nation, 
soon afterwards supplied. Had the colonies repre- 
sented in the Albany Convention been left as New 
England was in sixteen hundred and forty-three, self- 
dependent — had the news reached its conclave that 
the British monarchy was convulsed by revolution and 
could not extend even a paralytic hand to support or 
restrain its distant subjects, may it not be reasonably 
inferred, at least by us who know what occurred 
within a few years afterwards, when the hand of the 
Monarchy, covered with a steel gauntlet, became the 
hand of the oppressor, that just such an union as was 
framed, or one more efficient and less dependent, would 
have been formed, and that there was no adequate ob- 
stacle to it in the social condition of the colonies.* 

The peace of seventeen hundred and sixty-three, was 
the great era of the awakening of America. That peace 
gave opportunity for consciousness to tell its tale — op- 

* See letter from Dr. Wm. Clarke, of Boston, to Dr. Franklin, dated May 6, 1754, 
(Mass. Hist. Coll. 1st Series, vol. 4, p. 74.) '' However necessary an union may 
be for the mutual safety and preservation of these colonies, it is certain it will 
never take place, unless we are forced to it hy the supremo authority of the nation." 



39 

portunity for self-examination, and self-comparison with 
those around and above, and if the first feeling was pre- 
sumptuous or grateful joy, which, as it swelled in the 
bosom of each colonial community, certainly claimed 
no kindred with any thought of union, the next was a 
sense of deep injustice done by the common parent to 
all her American offspring — and in less than two years 
from that peace, a peace which took oif the outward 
pressure, and removed the outward danger — in less than 
ten years from the dissolution of the Albany Conven- 
tion and the rejection of its plan, a solemn Congress of 
the Colonies, convoked by Committees of Correspond- 
ence regularly organized from Carolina to New Hamp- 
shire, was sitting in this city, in stern and solemn de- 
liberation on the common grievances of all the Colonies. 

Of that Congress, the Stamp Act Congress of seven- 
teen hundred and sixty-five, it is becoming every Ame- 
rican to speak with reverence, as the forerunner of the 
other graver and greater body, which, called into being 
a few years later by renewed and protracted grievance, 
was destined never to adjourn. The Congress of seven- 
teen hundred and sixty-five, was but the shadow of the 
coming substance, which sprang into being on the pas- 
sage of the Port Bill, in seventeen hundred and seventy- 
four, and has its principal interest as an incident to the 
history of the political union of America. 

It met in New York, and it is the duty of some one 
of the many accomplished writers that New York pos- 

5 



34 

sesses, to present in detail its history to the world. 
The project had its origin in Massachusetts, but the 
suggestion met with a ready response throughout Colo- 
nial America. The Massachusetts letter was dated in 
June, and by the early part of October, the representa- 
tives of the most distant colonies had arrived in New 
York. But for the difficulties interposed by the Royal 
Governors, every colony would have been represented; 
even as it was, all seemed to feel alike, though some 
were thus denied any active participation. As I have 
said, I only refer to it as an incident in the history of 
progressive union. Its acts were a Petition and Re- 
monstrance to the King and Parliament. Temperate 
and guarded as the remonstrance was, it was the earn- 
est prayer of the wliole people of America — a people 
united now in right, in grievance, and in complaint. 
No plans for future action were suggested or urged, 
and if any were thought of, they were withheld or sup- 
pressed for the sake of harmony and union. 

There was an out-door observer, who watched- the 
deliberations of the first Congress with deep solicitude, 
and who was destined to be the faithful witness and to 
keep the high record of a still graver and more solemn 
council. Charles Thomson, the Old Secretary, as he 
is called, then a young man, and a merchant of Phila- 
delphia, came to New York to be the spectator of the- 
doings of the Stamp Act Congress; and I have in my 
possession, deposited there for better uses than other 



and jealous avocations permit me to apply it to, a manu- 
script Journal, written out at length by Mr. Thomson, 
of all its acts. For what object this record was made, 
whether for the writer's own use, or for ulterior pur- 
poses, it is not easy to say. It is a curious monument, 
as well of his industry as of the deep interest he then 
took in the approaching struggle. 

And when, twenty-four years afterwards, this same 
witness came hither again, the only and the fit com- 
panion who accompanied Washington from Mount Ver- 
non to New York, and stood by his side at his inaugu- 
ration, and heard the solemn voice raised to swear 
fidelity to the Constitution of the Independent United 
States, what must not have been the thick-coming re- 
collections which crowded on his mind! For fifteen 
years, long years of doubt and anxiety, had he kept the 
record of the august body, which necessity and intense 
sympathy had created for the guidance of revolutionary 
America, and which, without authority known to the 
laws or provincial constitutions, had almost miracu- 
lously, in concord and in discord, done all that regular 
government could do. He had seen, as an anxious spec- 
tator, what was done here to petition and remonstrate 
in seventeen hundred and sixty-five. He remembered the 
dark interval which followed, when bolt after bolt was 
forged in the parliamentary work-shop, and hurled at 
devoted America. He had not forgotten, when, at the 
end of that period, he had been suddenly called to be- 



36 

come the Secretary of the Congress of the Revolution, 
and found, in a small room in Carpenter's Hall, in Phila- 
delphia, forty-one individuals, convened almost on their 
ov^n motion, and preparing by their decrees to snatch 
from the British Crown, the brightest and dearest of its 
bright and most cherished jewels. The dawn of this 
Union was lowering and cloudy; and perhaps there never 
was a scene of more solemn anxiety than was presented 
at the moment when Charles Thomson entered that hum- 
ble council chamber. It was a scene even better worthy 
of the painter's art, than that other more tranquil one 
which a national painter has embalmed. It was a scene 
on which, in the decline of life, the ancient Secretary 
was always proud to dwell. 

On the fifth of September, seventeen hundred and 
seventy-four, the day the Congress met, Charles 
Thomson was a happy bridegroom. Musing, no 
doubt, on other things than the affairs of the pub- 
lic, he was met in the street by a hurried messen- 
ger, who came to tell him that the Congress, then 
about to organize, required his services as their 
Secretary. Nor w^ere the excuses which he so rea- 
sonably urged admitted ; but with the assurance that its 
session could not be prolonged more than a few days 
or weeks, he was made to yield a reluctant consent. 
As he entered the room, a plain, unadorned apartment, 
used by the Society of Master Carpenters for their 
periodical meetings, the Congress had just been called 



37 

to order, and prayers were about to be said. It was a 
prayer of deep solicitude — a prayer, which, through 
the lips of the preacher, came from the hearts of his 
auditors, and asked a blessing and illumination on coun- 
cils which were intricate and perplexed. But as the 
preacher, the loyal preacher,* prayed for the restora- 
tion of peace and friendly intercourse with the parent 
country, there were some faces in that assembly through 
which might be traced the instincts which prompted the 
belief that peace had fled for ever — that the silver cord 
was loosened, and the bowl broken at the very fountain 
— and that the next prayer which would there be heard, 
would be a still more fervent one, for the patriot, fight- 
ing for his home, and for the rights of home. — There 
was the subdued and anxious visage of Joseph Gallo- 
way, and the rather bolder, but still perplexed counte- 
nance of John Dickinson, the two great leaders of the 
peaceful politics of Pennsylvania; but neither of them 
the man for revolutionary times. — But there stood 
close by, a phalanx of other men, erect and firm, with 
iron frames and souls of fire ; undaunted, and ready for 
any crisis that might arise. There was the meagre, at- 
tenuated form of Henry, care-worn by the restless 
thoughts which were coursing through his soul — there 
were John and Samuel Adams, stern and scornful; 
the latter, the image of what we may conceive an an- 
cient Cameronian to have been, or one of those "grave, 

♦ The Rev. Jacob Duche. 



S8 

sad men," who, in the days of the Commonwealth, 
pronounced the stern decree on Charles Stuart — "■ Ty- 
rant of England." There stood Middleton, and 
the RuTLEDGEs, and Richard Henry Lee, the true 
representatives of Southern chivalry — and there, " the 
noblest Roman of them all," your own John Jay, than 
whom no purer spirit shed its influence on the contest 
then beginning; and near them stood one other, whom 
I need not name, an unpretending, young man, of noble 
stature and of modest mien, scarcely known except to 
his colleagues, who, as the prayer ascended, bowed his 
head in reverence, as if reluctant to look upon the fu- 
ture which was to canonize his glorious name. And 
from this moment downwards, Charles Thomson kept 
the record of the doings of that Congress — " he wrote 
what the thunders uttered" — he witnessed and shared 
its councils of dismay, anxiety, and triumph. When 
the approach of the enemy, in seventeen hundred and 
seventy-six, compelled them to retire to Baltimore, he 
was with them. When, at the darkest hour of the war, 
they retired to York, few in numbers, and broken in 
spirit, he was with them still — more than their mere 
scribe; their counsellor and friend: the man of un- 
daunted courage, as he was the man of unquestioned 
truth. As I have said, he lived to see the consumma- 
tion of the work, the hour of triumph, the hour of per- 
fected union. Whenever the history of the Union shall 
be written, the few (and unhappily there are but few) 



39 

records of this old man's life, will be worthy of careful 
study. Among them is a letter from Mr, Jay, from 
which, as it has never been published, I am tempted 
here to quote an extract. It is dated at Passy, in July, 
seventeen hundred and eighty-three, and seems to have 
had no other object than to urge the following sug- 
gestion. 

" When I consider that no person in the world, is so 
perfectly acquainted with the rise, conduct, and conclu- 
sion of the American Revolution as yourself, I cannot 
but wish that you would devote one hour in the four- 
and-twenty, to giving posterity a true account of it. I 
think it might be comprised in a small compass ; it need 
not be burdened with minute accounts of battles, sieges, 
retreats, evacuations, &c. : leave those matters to volu- 
minous historians. The political story of the Revolu- 
tion will be most liable to be misrepresented, and future 
relations of it will probably be replete both with inten- 
tional and accidental errors. Such a work would be 
highly advantageous to your reputation, as well as 
highly important to the cause of truth, with posterity. 
I do not mean it should be published during your life. 
That would be improper for many reasons; nor do I 
think it should be known that you are employed in 
such a work. This hint is, therefore, for yourself, and 
shall go no further." 

How much is it to be regretted that this wish was 



40 

disappointed, especially as a long life of leisure was 
then before him to whom it was addressed. 

Mr. Thomson retired from public life in July, seven- 
teen hundred and eighty-nine, then seeming to others, 
and believing himself an old man, having reached that 
age which the sceptical wisdom of this day fixes as the 
limit beyond which the judicial intellect at least cannot 
endure. Yet he who then thought the infirmities of 
approaching age required seclusion and repose, lived no 
less than thirty-five years in retirement, thirty of them 
in the full possession of his faculties and mental vigour. 
Nor was this a more remarkable instance of the un- 
looked for duration of human life, than that of another 
man of the revolution. There is extant, a letter from 
Dr. Franklin, which I have seen, dated at London, in 
September, seventeen hundred and sixty-six, in which 
he complains of the growing infirmities of years, and of 
his possible inability, on account of them, to return to 
America. Yet after that, what did not this old man 
live to see and do. He crossed the Atlantic no less 
than three times — he saw a civil war break out and ter- 
minate — he saw Independence declared and acknow- 
ledged — he framed the first Constitution of Pennsylva- 
nia, and was Governor under it — he negotiated the al- 
liance with France — he signed the Definitive Treaty of 
Peace with Great Britain — he saw a National Sove- 
reignty created, and was an active member of that au- 



41 

gust body which framed the Constitution of the Union. 
All this he did, after he condemned himself as too old 
and too feeble to work at all. The name of Dr. Frank- 
lin recalls me to the path from which I have uncon- 
sciously wandered, and brings me back but for a mo- 
ment before I conclude, to the Congress of seventeen 
hundred and sixty-five, and its incidents. Among them, 
not the least important was Franklin's mission to Eng- 
land, and his being chosen by several colonies to repre- 
sent them. For a series of years, he was, in fact, the 
minister to London of the United Colonies, and as the 
American Representative in Great Britain, became the 
object of deep and affectionate interest to all who felt 
he represented them. His appearance before the Privy 
Council, and his examination at the bar of the House 
of Commons, as an American witness, are leading in- 
cidents in our United History. 

Between seventeen hundred and sixty-five and seven- 
teen hundred and seventy-four, chain after chain was 
forged in the mother country to shackle the limbs of her 
colonies. Such, in that interval, was the growth of 
united sentiment in America, so perfect the neighbourly 
sympathy, that the immediate cause of the convocation 
of the Revolutionary Congress was no enactment af- 
fecting all, or any considerable portion of Colonial 
America, but a statute having for its object the punish- 
ment of a single disobedient town and the closing of 
a single harbour. 

6 



42 

Ministerial vengeance aimed a blow at the merchants 
and traders of Boston, and the whole nation, through 
its representatives in Congress, stepped forward to the 
rescue. 

The councils of the Old Congress, this great creation 
of the social union, its secret doings and deliberations, 
are but little known. The witnesses of that conclave 
have, one by one dropped into the grave, and no one 
survives to tell the tale of its anxious deliberations. 
For myself, were I to express one wish nearer to my 
heart than any other connected with historical investi- 
gations, it is that the illuminated record of those coun- 
cils may yet be rescued from oblivion.* It would illus- 
trate the spirit of the Revolution better than its battles 
or its tumults — it would show how little communion 
that spirit has with the radicalism of the hour, which 
profanely claims the Revolution as its authority — the 
spirit of patriotic deliberation — the firm contemplation 
of impending danger — the resolution to do public duty 



♦ Mr. Madison's Report of the Debates in the old Congress, extends from the 4th 
of November, 1782, to the 21st June, 1783. Mr. Jefferson's brief memoranda extend 
from June 7th, to August 1st, 1776. " These," says Mr. Gilpin, in his Preface to 
the Madison Papers, "are the only known or probable materials of what passed in 
Congress in the form of Debates." Among the papers of Charles Thomson, now in 
my possession, is a folio volume of about seventy pages of manuscrijjt Notes of De- 
bates in Congress, made by Mr. Thomson, extending from July 22d, to 20th Septem- 
ber, 1782. They appear to be very full and precise. It is the intention of Mr. 
Thomson's family to have these and other memorials of their distinguished ancestor 
published. 



43 

at whatever sacrifice — the heroism of high counsel — the 
intellectual romance which distinguishes our Revolu- 
tion from all others the world has ever seen. 

And, to judge the better of this romantic purity, con- 
trast it, either in the council or the field, with that other 
of history's records which was so soon after written — 
the annals of revolutionary France. Compare the old 
Continental Congress with the Assembly, or the No- 
tables, or the Convention, or the Council of Ancients. 
Take their great men, from Mirabeau, the greatest of 
them all, downward on the roll, to the poorest, stroll- 
ing patriot of the smallest section, and contrast each 
and all of them with the true chivalry of our annals — 
our soldiers or our statesmen, and still the palm is glo- 
riously ours. 

I have often made this contrast, and have often tried 
to find, in the annals of Revolutionary France, any 
thing on which that high principle of our intellectual 
and moral nature, the poetic instinct, can dwell with 
pleasure. They were tragic enough; but it was the 
unvarying, unmitigated tragedy which nauseates the 
mind with horrors. There was no more poetry in it 
than there is in the gallows or the bow-string. It 
was like witchcraft's dread mixture, the fermenta- 
tion of coarse animal ingredients, without a leaf, 
or a flower, or a fragrant herb being cast into the 
boiling cauldron, or ever bubbling to its surface. 
There was no object of sympathy, or there were ten 



44 

thousand too many. The Republic itself, even as it 
sprang from its birth-place, was no creation of beauty. 
There were the helmet and the sword, and the gorgon 
shield with all its hissing snakes — but there was not the 
majestic step or the stately beauty of the Goddess. 
And when the Republic fell, after it had so often changed 
its garb from one costume of frippery to another, and so 
often washed its bloody hands, there is nothing to com- 
pare it to, in all its mutilated and unpitied deformity, 
but that most disgusting of its horrible pictures, when 
Robespierre lay stretched on a table in the Committee 
of Public Safety, with his hands tied behind him, like a 
common felon — his jaw broken by his own cowardly 
pistol-shot, dressed in a sky-blue silk coat, with his 
powdered hair and his lace ruffles dabbled in his own 
blood. It was the very incarnation of French Republi- 
canism in its last unpitied agonies. 

Our Revolution was the effort of a dependent peo- 
ple to stand by itself — to think for itself — to govern it- 
self. It was the effort of a poor people to sustain it- 
self. It involved a long and unequal contest — the de- 
solation of many a field of prosperous industry — the 
sacrifice of many a cherished life. But it involved no 
wanton desolation. It was a war of defence — a war for 
home and the rights of home. There w^as no persecu- 
tion — there was no scaffold. There was, throughout, 
and never more than in our early united councils, the 
high dignity of that character which America inherited 



45 

from her British ancestry, embellished by the gentler 
grace which the refining spirit of the age hung around 
it. It was like the first great English Revolution in 
its dignity — unlike it — oh how unlike it, in its results ! 

Having thus, within limits which necessity and pro- 
priety impose, hinted at rather than illustrated a vindi- 
cation of the antiquity of our social union, is there no 
lesson to be gathered from the retrospect — no moral 
which this very antiquity enforces? It is the social 
union and its antiquity, alone, that I have sought to vin- 
dicate — the union of distant hearts, rather than the 
union of hands — the yearning of hearts which space 
alone separates, but which are bent on the same dear 
object, warmed by the same cherished affections. From 
the social union the political union sprang, and with the 
social union will the political union perish. The social 
union is the Mother Earth on which the Temple stands. 
That Mother Earth I would keep sacred, free even from 
the spade and the plough which would break the sod 
where grow the grass and flowers that spring from the 
graves of our Revolutionary forefathers. 

The political Union has safely stood. It has with- 
stood violence — it has withstood metaphysics — it has 
withstood the subtle spirit of political criticism, a spirit 
which studies the Constitution as the sceptic studies 
the Bible, to doubt and to cavil, and for its own pur- 
poses to construe it strictly. It has defied all this, and 



46 

yet sometimes the fear will intrude itself — that all is 
not safe yet. 

There are, on the face of the building (the northern 
side too, where the moss begins to grow) two adjacent 
masses, which can never be separated without toppling 
down the fabric itself. Your own hearts will tell you, 
with what feelings the events of the day prompt me, a 
Philadelphian, to speak to you as New Yorkers. If 
any foreign traveller, like the Rev. Mr. Burnaby in se- 
venteen hundred and fifty-nine, were to come to our 
country now, to speculate, as he did, on the surface, 
the venj surface of things, what might not be the im- 
pressions on his mind, that passing events would produce. 
He would see New York and Pennsylvania, not the 
cradled infants they then were, but full grown, with gi- 
gantic proportions, and animated by spirits as ardent 
and generous as ever were breathed into humanity ; not 
contending for " the trade of New Jersey ;" but striving 
fairly, generously, actively, for the commerce of a new 
world, which has sprung up in the wilderness. He 
might find them, if he looked merely at the surface, and 
took for his guides, those who now claim to be the 
guides of public opinion, standing in the attitude of des- 
perate gladiators, and (what gladiators would not do,) 
hurling at each other every missile that revenge or 
malice can supply. New York, seeming to triumph 
over Pennsylvania in an hour of distress and difficulty; 



47 

exulting over a brother, not fallen, not even bowed 
down, but yielding, as the strong man yields to the 
blast that he has often breasted, yielding, as his bro- 
thers of the union have yielded before him, and now, in 
this, his darkest hour, collecting his mighty energies to 
stand as nobly and as proudly as before : — and Penn- 
sylvania forced to think that New York, this beautiful 
New York, through whose streets no one can walk 
without admiration; from whose citizens no one can 
part without gratitude ; that New York is its worst and 
bitterest enemy. 

It was not so in times gone by. It was not so dur- 
ing the Revolution, or the times, almost as trying, 
which immediately preceded it, when the spirit of the 
social union was hovering over the councils of those 
who met to raise the Confederation. The nearest and 
dearest friend of John Jay of New York, was Charles 
Thomson of Philadelphia; of Robert Morris of Penn- 
sylvania, him who raised, and almost individually sus- 
tained the finances of the Revolution, the best, most 
confidential, most worthy friend, was Alexander Ham- 
ilton of New York: and there is in existence in Phi- 
ladelphia, a mass of most interesting correspondence 
between these two great men, which illustrates more 
strongly than any yet laid before the world, not only 
their consummate sagacity, and foresight of the dim and 
distant future, but the deep, fervent, and affectionate 
friendship which subsisted between them. And with 



48 

such canonized examples, shall we, the little men of a 
fleeting hour which may have no other record but of 
miserable squabbles about protested bills and specie 
payments, allow the chains of sacred affection, thus 
forged, to be thus rudely broken? 

Nor is this local strife all. There are, it is to be 
feared, elements of fierce combustion swelling and heav- 
ing the ground beneath our feet. The pure, spirit-like 
flame of loyalty to the state, of true love to the institu- 
tions under which we live, begins to pale its ineffectual 
fire before the ghastly glare of fierce fanaticism, and 
the torch which wild enthusiasm waves aloft. Not 
only is the genius of revolution exercising its sway on 
the moss-covered governments of the old world, but a 
subtle and busy daemon, the bastard progeny of one of 
the parents of all revolution is at work, to pick out the 
cement of affection which binds this Union together. 
We are beginning to learn that fidelity to the Common 
State is a secondary duty, and love to our distant fel- 
low-citizen no duty at all. When the full fruition of 
these doctrines is attained — when the hour arrives in 
which the value of the Union is to be calculated — when 
the balance is to be struck between what will be called 
romantic notions of duty and allegiance, and substantial 
items of profit and loss on one side, and dogmas of 
transcendental morality on the other — when the holiest 
of early associations and the purest affections, the love 
of country, and the reverence of ancestry are to be 



49 

weighed in the scale against American utilitarianism, or 
American ultraism, it will be too late to talk of oiir 
common legacy. But the time has not come. The 
sympathies of republican America are yet active. The 
heart of the South is not yet ossified by the pestilent 
doctrine of the day — that what is profitable is right. 
The Northern heart beats true to its allegiance — true 
to a brother's love. 

I have now concluded what I have to say to you, 
leaving myself open to the just criticism and as just re- 
buke, of having said too much, and yet so little. But 
I have said enough, if in the heart of any one of those 
who have so kindly listened, I have invigorated a senti- 
ment of affection or of loyalty to the common state — 
or have suggested one new thought connected with that 
best of histories for us, our own. The foundation of 
the Union was common right — its best security is com- 
mon inheritance. The soil on which we stand is filled 
with the bones of those who lived and died for us. 
The spirits of the mighty dead are above us and 
about us. Their affections are breathing around us. 
The object of their toil, the recompense of their suffer- 
ing was this Republican Union. To perpetuate that 
Union, to awe to blushing silence all whispers of dis- 
union, let them come whence they may, I would hang 
on its walls, and stand in its noble porticoes, the pic- 
tures of heroic deeds and the statues of the men that 
did them. I would build high monuments on their 

7 



50 

graves, on which praises more just than the canon of 
the day can boast of, should be written, and then, when 
the agent of faction or mistaken zeal should venture to 
breathe a word as to the Union's value, or the Consti- 
tution's obligation, I would lead him thither, and as we 
knelt in veneration together, would trust to some inter- 
ceding spirit to draw from his lips as fervent a prayer 
as mine, that the work of the Revolution may not be 
in vain. 



APPENDIX, 

A. Ex-President Adams. 
The following letter has never before been published, and its existence is pro- 
bably unknown to the eminent individual to whom it in part relates. It is a let- 
ter from John Dickinson to Mr. Jefferson, written in 1801, on the election of the 
latter to the presidency. By one of those curious transitions which often occur in 
politics, Mr. Dickinson, in the latter part of his life, became the vehement partizan 
of the extreme doctinnes of Mr. Jefferson and his school, and it was in the confidence 
of personal and political friendship that the following letter was written. Mr. Dick- 
inson was a leading member of the Society of Friends and resided in the State of De- 
laware. During the latter part of his life, Mr. Jefferson and he corresponded on 
terms of extreme affection. In March, 1801, Mr. Jefferson, in thanking his "very 
dear and ancient friend" for a letter, says, (vol. 3, p. 454,) "No pleasure can exceed 
that which I received from reading your letter of the 21st. It was like the joy we 
expect in the mansions of the blessed, when received with the embraces of our fore- 
fathers, we shall be welcomed as having done our part not unworthily of them." Af- 
ter Mr. Dickinson died, in 1807, Mr. Jefferson's ecstatic affection for him seems to 
have been buried in his grave; for in 1813, he wrote as follows, to another " very dear 
and ancient friend," (p. 202.) " In the old Congress, you and I were together, and 
the Jays, (!) and the Dickinsons, and other anti-independents were arrayed against 
Us. They cherished the monarchy of England, and we the rights of our country- 
men." A few years later, (p. 315,) he speaks of "the doubting Dickinson and 
others who hung so heavily upon us." 

Wilmington, the 21th of the Gih month, 1801. 
My dear Friend, 

Thy letter of the 21st, was received the day before yesterday, and as I value thy es- 
teem at a very high rate, it gave me great pleasure. If it be possible that I can ren- 
der any service to thee by offering my sentiments on things relating to this state, as 
on the broader scale of the Union, I shall cheerfully express them, being fully per- 
suaded that therein 1 shall, in the best manner I can, serve my country. When a 
person, attentively surveying the world, observes the variety of opinions on the same 
subjects, and the peculiarity of circumstances occasioning such variety, however he 
may condemn some of thcni as erroneous or injurious, yet, if they are held in since- 
rity, he will regard the holders of them with complacency and not with aversion. He 
sees his fellow-creatures wandering from salutary truths, to which he wishes to bring 
them back, for their own welfare as well as for the general benefit. These disposi- 
tions are accordant with the goodness of the Common Parent, which has invested all 
his rational creatures with equal rights, and with propensities favourable to mutual 
felicity. Actual republicanism is a system of human invention, for carrying these 
benevolent and sacred principles into effect, by the diffusion of happiness. Repub- 
licans, therefore, cannot, in any consistency with the principles of their system, pro- 
scribe any of their fellow-citizens merely for a difference of political opinion. On this 
important point, real republicans are not governed by reasoning only. They discover 
in themselves sensations superior to arguments. Their benignity is not completely 
gratified, unless their adversaries share in their satisfaction. The prudence of such 
a conduct is questioned by some ; its efficacy by others. To both it may be replied, 
that parties consist of dissoluble materials; and that every country in Europe, and 
particularly England, furnishes instances of parties, agitated by the most furious rage 
against each other, of which no traces are now to be found, but in the pages of history. 
There is one peril peculiar to a successful party, of which many examples, ancient 
and modern, occur: that is, of its dividing. We have not been without a domestic 
sample of this kind. In every age, and in every land, an eager selfishness has been 
the source of this evil. At present, there is little to be apprehended by republicans 
on this head, though it may not be improper to consider such an event as a possibility; 
for then the attention will be duly engaged in guarding against it. The greatest dan- 
ger to rulers is while the passions are in conflict ; that danger may be avoided by two 
modes of proceeding. First, by engaging in measures that will gradually withdraw 
the mind from the objects of contest; and more especially, if the measures are such 
as both parties may approve. An agreement in these latter aflfairs will be a kind of 
opiate against former feuds. Secondly, by turning the countenance of Government, 
with respect and kindness, upon those who differ from the rulers in opinion. Here 
immediately "the serious difficulties'' open to view. It is to be lamented, that many 



APPENDIX. 

who join with us arc not sufficiently acquainted with the wisdom or temper of their 
profession. Their ardour is honest; too often tinctured with a vindictive spirit, and 
sometimes dashed with more than a sufficiency of sellishness. These are not the best, 
though frequently the most importunate of counsellors. 

Perfectly assured, as I am, that the Chief Magistrate of my country aims at the 
universal good of his fellow-citizens, and invited as I am by his obliging condescen- 
sion, I let my thoughts t3ow from my pen without reserve. It seems to me impossible 
for the President to have adopted a more wise method for obtaining useful informa- 
tion, than that of being on terms of confidential intercourse with several persons in 
each state, on whom he can rely. Yet that method will not solve every difficulty. 
The character of the administration is to be fixed in the opinion of the world. It is 
to be acknowledged to be mild, firm, generous, dignified. Disdaining to court its ene- 
mies, it will not be unduly influenced by its friends. The Administrator will act as 
the father of his country. 

Taking this elevated station, I wish him to make two or three capital promotions 
of his opponents, with proper pauses between the appointments, so that each may 
make its full impression. I do not mean from among those in Congress, who, abus- 
ing the trust reposed in them, and sinning against better knowledge, have for un- 
worthy purposes, by a vile sophistry, striven to confound all distinction between right 
and wrong, audaciously violated the constitution, and avowed doctrines utterly in- 
compatible with the maxims of Liberty. Let us leave these Tarentines and the angry 
deities they worship, in company together. Among tiicse promotions, I should like 
to see the son of our cyiemij, John Adams, appointed minister to the Court of Peters- 
burg. The more unexpected such an act, the greater will be its cfliect. It implies a 
sincere confidence in the promoter, and that his mind moves in a region above the 
stormy or the obscuring passions. Another consideration will come home to such a 
heart as thine. This honourable regard to a falling family, will be soothing to them. 
It may render them less unhappy, and as it is a blessed thing to have the power of 
doing good to others, even a chance of its application is valuable. As to political con- 
siderations, internal or external, they appear to me decisive. As to the first, it may 
be sufficient to add to what has been said, that the warm persons who may be dis- 
pleased, will become reconciled. As to the second, I have never heard any satisfac- 
tory reason assigned, why the greatest Northern Power has been slighted by our 
prompt advances to those that are inferior. The accession of a new Prince, the 
points of public law now in controversy, and a number of accompanying circumstances, 
seem to call upon us to form a Treaty that shall recognize principles favourable to all 
mankind, and convince Russia that we wish to come to her market for some of her 
manufactures. It strikes me that a perfectly friendly intercourse with that country, 
and with France, is of more importance to us than with any other two portions in 
Europe. 

As to the other promotions that have been mentioned, by being remarkable, or sea- 
sonable, they will operate desirably in tranquillizing minds that are too much heated. 
These dispositions being made, the distribution of other offices may go on without 
giving much disgust, especially as great changes must be made before one party can 
be brought up to an equality with the other. Respecting this state, some of the best 
mformed citizens are of opinion that no removals should take place, uidess for malver- 
sation in office, before the next session of Congress. Called upon, as I am, by thy 
friendship and love of country, I shall plainly answer the case proposed. If nothing 
shall be decided by the instituted inquiry, yet, if "electioneering activity" be admitted 
as a cause of removal, I question whether any man in these states has been more 
zealous in that way, than the officer mentioned. Two persons here wish to succeed 
him. John Bennet, an officer of merit in our revolutionary war, and Thomas Men- 
denhall, who. as a private individual, suffered a good deal in that war. 1 have never 
heard the character of either of them impeached ; they are both worthy republicans. 
I think the last is the best qualified for the office. When any other alterations are 
meditated in this state, 1 shall be ready to give my sentiments, with a cheerfulness and 
impartiality becoming a man who fervently desires thy administration may be benefi- 
cent to thy country, and honourable to thyself, and who is, with the strictest truth, 
thy affectionate friend, 

^ JOHN DICKINSON. 

It is unnecessary to add, that Mr. Dickinson's advice, with reference to Mr. John 
duincy Adams, was not followed. Mr. Adams was appointed to the Russian mia- 
sion ia 1809, by Mr. Ma,dison. 



011 696 826 5 



